A boy's suffering

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The suffering of a boy is the title of a novella by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer . The first thoughts on this go back to 1877, and the novella was published in 1883. Stylistically, the work can be assigned to realism .

Emergence

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The source for Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's novella are the memoirs Saint-Simons from the years 1709 and 1711, in which it is reported that after a student prank at the Paris Jesuit school, a son of Marshal Boufflers died as a result of the caning, while the two sons of the Police Minister Argenson got away with it:

“Le petit Boufflers […] qui n'en avait pas plus fait que les deux d'Argenson, et avec eux fut saisi d'un tel désespoir, qu'il tomba malade le jour même. On le porta chez le maréchal, où il fut impossible de le sauver. Le coeur était saisi, le sang gâté; le pourpre parut, en quatre jours cela fut fini. »

"The little Bouffliers [...] who had done nothing more than the two Argensons and was seized with them, <was> of such hopelessness that he fell ill the same day. He was carried to the Marshal where it was not possible to save him. The heart was attacked, the blood spoiled, the redness faded, in four days it was over. "

Title of the novella

Meyer, who had been working on the subject since 1877, first published the work in 1883 in the weekly Schores Familienblatt under the title Julian Boufflers. A child's suffering . Meyer originally intended the title The Sorrows of a Boy . How the final change in The Suffering of a Boy came about, whether at Meyer's own initiative or that of his publishers or editors, is no longer comprehensible. In Matthias Luserke's opinion, parallels emerge through both the plural and the singular of the title, such as with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther and in the singular with the Passion of Christ . Meyer alludes to this several times in the novella and at the end describes the fate of the title hero Julian as " Golgotha among the Jesuits".

content

The novella is set in the late reign of the French King Louis XIV , the event described in the internal story after 1700, while the frame story is to be set in 1709, when the Jesuit Père Tellier succeeds the Jesuit Père Lachaise and becomes the king's confessor.

People of the frame narrative

  • King Louis XIV
  • Madame de Maintenon is the wife of Louis XIV from a morganatic marriage . At the beginning of the novella, Meyer characterized her as a "discreet friend".
  • The king's personal physician, Fagon , who also plays an active role in the internal story, informs the king and Madame de Maintenon about the machinations of Le Tellier and the fate of Julian.

Main characters of the internal narrative

  • Julian Boufflers, son of the royal marshal Louis-François de Boufflers , is considered to be a bit mentally retarded, but is hardworking, noble, “of impeccable character and exemplary disposition”. He turns out to be a talented animal painter, fencer and marksman. In the internal narrative, the young person is unjustly punished and mistreated by his teacher, the Jesuit Père Tellier, which results in his death.
Michel Le Tellier
  • At the time of the internal narrative, Père Tellier is prefect of studies at the Jesuit college in Paris. In 1709 he became the king's confessor. Because of his shady character, he is compared several times in the novel with a leitmotif with a wolf. While the king only describes Tellier's physiognomy as repulsive and wolfish, in Fagon's eyes he is characteristically the “treacherous wolf” and the “squat and hard-boned booby with his wolf's snout”, whereby, according to Christof Laumont, “the wolfish is associated with the devilish from the start . "
  • Père Amiel is a rhetoric teacher at the Jesuit school. He is mocked by the young people, with the exception of Julian's, because of his long nose and facial expressions.
  • Mouton, a neglected animal painter who gives Julian drawing lessons, tries to persuade Julian to flee. In his drawing of the hopelessly fleeing Pentheus with Julian's features and the maenads chasing him , one of whom is depicted with a Jesuit hat, he anticipates Julian's fate. Mouton dies before Julian.
  • Viktor, son of Police Minister Argenson , is a classmate of Julian's. He is the one who seduces Julian to caricature Père Amiel with a pun that Julian did not see through .

Plot of the novella

The framework begins with an evening visit by Louis XIV to Madame de Maintenon. The royal personal physician Fagon, who at the lunchtime audience half-aloud referred to the designated new confessor Tellier as “rascal” and “scoundrel”, arrives and tries to justify himself. To warn the king about Père Tellier, he tells the story of the young Julian who died an early death as a result of Tellier's machinations. The following report is frequently interrupted by objections from the king and, as a result, Fagon’s answers that move away from the main topic, such as his criticism of the Huguenot persecution and forced conversions initiated by Louis XIV .

The story of Julian

Julian, the eldest son of Marshal Boufflers and his late first wife, came to the Paris Jesuit school at the age of 14, where he was initially treated lovingly despite his learning difficulties. However, after Marshal Boufflers uncovered an attempt at fraud by the Jesuits from Orléans with the help of Fagons, Fagon advises the Marshal to take the youngsters away from school, since the "dogged hatred and swallowed resentment" would make themselves felt towards Julian because of the uncovering of the villainy. Boufflers does not take Fagon's warning seriously, but rather says that a little more severity could not harm the boy. In fact, the behavior of teachers towards Julian is changing.

Meanwhile, Julian has taken painting lessons from the animal painter Mouton in his spare time, and he proves to be a skilled draftsman, which his classmates do not hide. Before the scandal that leads to Julian's death, Julian's burgeoning love for the pretty, somewhat inexperienced Mirabelle Miramion is portrayed, as is his skill in fencing, which he does not show off towards his classmates, but remains modest.

Julian's dearest wish is to leave school and serve in the king's army. Fagon, who took the boy under his protection after the death of Julian's mother, encourages him and plans to visit the marshal with Julian after his return from a border security campaign.

It comes to a scandal after Julian's classmates hatched a mean prank during the break before Père Amiel's rhetoric class and asked Julian to draw a rhinoceros or an owl on the blackboard. Julian refuses because he suspects, not wrongly, that the classmates are trying to allude to Père Amiel's long nose in order to annoy the father. Only when Viktor, the police minister's son, suggests drawing a bee and writing something about it, Julian agrees. First he writes “abeille” (bee). Viktor hypocritically expresses that this is too prosaic and instead suggests "honey animals" ("Bête à miel"). Julian doesn't see through the play on words, Père Amiel, who enters the classroom shortly afterwards, certainly does, but plays the unsuspecting, which leads to a yell from the students: “Bête Amiel! stupid Amiel! ”Tellier, who wants to discipline the students, sees through the pun immediately. When asked who drew and wrote that, Julian answers. Despite Viktor's objection and the admission that he instigated Julian, Tellier mistreats the innocent Julian. When Fagon wants to pick him up and bring him to his father, Julian stumbles out of the gate, "his head leaning forward, his back broken, his figure bent, on unsteady feet." Viktor, who accompanies Julian, is full of anger and demands a hearing and action against Father Tellier.

Fagon, Police Minister Argenson, Viktor and Père Amiel visit Tellier, who is now in the professorship . Cornered and apparently ready to make concessions, Tellier manages to escape through a secret staircase to Rouen .

On the same day Julian collapses in the presence of his father at a supper in Versailles and fantasizes in a feverish madness. After Fagon's accusations, his father recognizes the neglect of Julian and stands by him in his last hours. In his agony, his father gives him the illusion of a campaign with a final “heroic deed”, and Julian dies with the words: “Vive le roi!”

Despite Fagon's cautionary report, the story ends “without having the intended effect”. The king decides to keep Le Tellier as confessor and feels only “pity” for Julian's fate and “the pleasure of a story” on hearing Fagon's report. At the end he comments on Fagon's report with the words: “Poor child!”, While Madame de Maintenon is touched. The novella ends with Fagon's answer to the king:

"Why poor" asked Fagon cheerfully, "since he went there as a hero?"

Contemporary reception

After its publication, the novella mostly met with a positive response, with the exception of a few strictly Catholic circles who rejected Meyer's criticism of the Jesuits.

Johanna Spyri wrote to Meyer on October 11, 1883: “You have gathered so much material for your little work that I sometimes like to digress while reading and reading. this u. would have followed that personality whom you had portrayed so vividly in just a few strokes. The poor young hero is very personable. He wasn't stupid, he speaks of himself so clearly and consciously. finely judging, as no fool can do. "

Louise von François , who had been informed about Meyer's project since 1881, was just as moved after the novella was published, but criticized the fact that he had put the fable back into a frame and “she would have preferred a direct description [...] without an intermediary narrator . "

Gottfried Keller was cautious, but praised Meyer's characterization of the two students: “The two boys are an excellent contrast: Julian, who dies when he is hit by a bad hand, and young Argenson, who is“ very good! ” says if he gets a slap in the face from a good hand! And both are equally good! "

After Otto Brahm described the novella in a review in the Berliner Vossische Zeitung as “youth work”, Meyer saw himself in a letter to Julius Rodenberg dated December 18, 1883, prompted a correction with a simultaneous self-critical analysis: “[...] the novel is new, but written in my first manner, of course on purpose. It has its flaws: the not entirely natural framework, etc. then the not entirely true drawing of an untalented person who at times evidently exceeds his horizon in his speeches. But it holds on to its "tendency", which I did not intend at all. "Meyer specified this allegedly unintended tendency again in a letter to Friedrich von Wyß on December 19, 1883 :" I am very grateful that you appreciate the boy. Just know that I didn't mean the slightest tendency. The story (8 lines in St. Simons) touched me and I gave him body. Voilà tout. "

literature

Used edition

  • Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: Complete Works. A boy's suffering . Th. Knaur, Munich 1954, p. 428-468 .

Secondary literature

  • Christof Laumont: Every thought as a visible form. Forms and functions of allegory in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's narrative poetry . Wallstein , Göttingen 1997, ISBN 3-89244-248-7 , Chapter VII. Very figuratively speaking: The suffering of a boy, p. 215–240 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Matthias Luserke: School tells. Literary mirror images in the 19th and 20th centuries . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-525-34016-8 , chapter: Prussianism alone. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: The suffering of a boy, p. 24–34 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  • John Osborne: Of The Use Of History. Studies on the work of Conrad Ferdinand Meyers . Hedgehog Wiss. , Paderborn 1994, ISBN 3-927104-90-6 , Chapter IV: The story and the self: The suffering of a boy and the judge, p. 102–119 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Gwendolyn Whittaker: Overburdening - Subversion - Empowerment. School and literary modernity 1880–1918 . V&R unipress , Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8471-0095-9 , chapter: The inevitable speech: Overburdening as a language effect in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's ›The Suffering of a Boy‹ (1883), p. 62–77 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Hans Wysling , Elisabeth Lott-Büttiker (eds.): Conrad Ferdinand Meyer 1825–1898 . Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-85823-724-8 , p. 353-360 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Wysling, Elisabeth Lott-Büttiker (ed.): Conrad Ferdinand Meyer 1825–1898 . Zurich 1998, p. 358
  2. ↑ Quoted from Gwendolyn Whittaker: Overburdening - Subversion - Empowerment. School and literary modernity 1880–1918 . V&R Unipress, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8471-0095-9 , p. 64
  3. ↑ See also Matthias Luserke : School tells. Literary mirror images in the 19th and 20th centuries. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1999, p. 25. The incident with Bouffler's son is missing in the German-language abridged edition of the memoirs Saint-Simons at Project Gutenberg , while in the memoirs from 1709 it is about the seedy character of Tellier, his cruelty and the The incident with Fagon mentioned in the framework of the novella is reported ( Louis de Rouvroy duc de Saint-Simon: From the Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon - Chapter 10 ). The full French-language text of the Mémoires de Saint-Simon from 1711, in which the youth's death is reported, can be found in Tome 09, Chapitre IV: Mort du fils aîné du maréchal de Boufflers, dont la survivance passe au cadet.
  4. ^ A b John Osborne: Of the benefit of history. Studies on the work of Conrad Ferdinand Meyers . Paderborn 1994 p. 103
  5. ↑ a b Matthias Luserke: School tells. Literary mirror images in the 19th and 20th centuries. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1999, p. 25
  6. ↑ Christof Laumont also speaks in: Every thought as a visible form. Forms and functions of the allegory in the narrative poetry by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer , Göttingen 1997, p. 234 of an "identification with Christ"
  7. ^ Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: Complete works . Th. Knaur Nachf., Munich 1954, p. 431
  8. ↑ a b Christof Laumont: Every thought as a visible form. Forms and functions of allegory in the narrative poem by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer , Göttingen 1997, p. 217
  9. ↑ Cf. Christof Laumont: Every thought as a visible form. Forms and functions of allegory in the narrative poem by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer , Göttingen 1997, p. 222
  10. ^ Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: Complete works . Th. Knaur Nachf., Munich 1954, p. 459
  11. ^ Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: Complete works . Th. Knaur Nachf., Munich 1954, p. 457
  12. ^ Matthias Luserke: School tells. Literary mirror images in the 19th and 20th centuries. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1999, p. 33
  13. ↑ John Osborne: On the Use of History. Studies on the work of Conrad Ferdinand Meyers . Igel, Paderborn 1994, p. 117
  14. ^ Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: Complete works . Th. Knaur Nachf., Munich 1954, p. 465
  15. ^ Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: Complete works . Th. Knaur Nachf., Munich 1954, p. 468
  16. ↑ a b Hans Wysling, Elisabeth Lott-Büttiker (ed.): Conrad Ferdinand Meyer 1825–1898 . Zurich 1998, p. 360
  17. ↑ a b c d Quoted from Hans Wysling, Elisabeth Lott-Büttiker (ed.): Conrad Ferdinand Meyer 1825–1898 . Zurich 1998, p. 360